Automated scheduling of contact center agents using real-time analytics

ABSTRACT

A system for automatically scheduling contact center agents using real-time analytics, comprising an analytics server that receives and analyzes interaction information, a scheduling server that produces scheduling events based on the analysis, and a queueing server that modifies a current state of agent workstations based on the scheduling events, and a method for system for automatically scheduling contact center agents using real-time analytics.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

Application No. Date Filed Title Current Herewith AUTOMATED SCHEDULINGapplication OF CONTACT CENTER AGENTS USING REAL-TIME ANALYTICS Is acontinuation of: 15/278,030 Sep. 28, 2016 AUTOMATED SCHEDULING OFCONTACT CENTER AGENTS USING REAL-TIME ANALYTICS the entire specificationof each of which is incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Field of the Art

The disclosure relates to the field of contact center operations, andmore particularly to the field of scheduling contact center agentsautomatically using real-time analytics.

Discussion of the State of the Art

In the art of contact center operation, agents are scheduledindividually for optimum performance, taking into consideration time fortraining and meetings as well as follow-up with ongoing customerinteractions such as for outbound “callbacks”, as well as agentavailability when they are scheduled to work and be available for newinteractions such as being in an active telephone queue to receivecustomer calls. However, agent performance on a per-interaction basiscannot be accounted for in scheduling, and many interactions may beaffected by poor training or technical issues before the issue can becorrected with current scheduling methods.

What is needed, is a means to monitor and analyze interactions, use thisanalysis to generate scheduling changes, and implement schedulingchanges automatically in real-time to further optimize agent performanceaccounting for each interaction as they occur.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, the inventor has conceived and reduced to practice, in apreferred embodiment of the invention, a system and method forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, comprising an analytics server comprising at least aplurality of programming instructions stored in a memory and operatingon a processor of a network-connected computing device and configured toreceive at least a plurality of interaction-specific information from aplurality of contact center systems, and configured to analyze at leasta portion of the plurality of interaction-specific information, andconfigured to provide at least a portion of the analysis results to ascheduling server; a scheduling server comprising at least a pluralityof programming instructions stored in a memory and operating on aprocessor of a network-connected computing device and configured tomaintain a schedule for each of a plurality of contact center agents,the schedule comprising at least a plurality of work items and aplurality of time-based scheduling information, and configured toreceive a plurality of analysis information from an analytics server,and configured to produce a plurality of scheduling events based atleast in part on at least a portion of the received analysisinformation, and configured to operate on at least an agent schedulebased at least in part on a portion of the plurality of schedulingevents; and an agent queueing server comprising at least a plurality ofprogramming instructions stored in a memory and operating on a processorof a network-connected computing device and configured to receive atleast a plurality of agent-specific information from a plurality ofagent workstations, the agent-specific information comprising at leastan agent's current status, and configured to operate on at least aportion of a plurality of agent workstations to configure at least anagent's current status, the configuration being based at least in parton an agent schedule, is disclosed.

According to another preferred embodiment of the invention, a method forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, comprising the steps of receiving, at an analytics servercomprising at least a plurality of programming instructions stored in amemory and operating on a processor of a network-connected computingdevice and configured to receive at least a plurality ofinteraction-specific information from a plurality of contact centersystems, and configured to analyze at least a portion of the pluralityof interaction-specific information, and configured to provide at leasta portion of the analysis results to a scheduling server, a plurality ofinteraction-specific information; analyzing at least a portion of theinteraction-specific information; producing, using a scheduling servercomprising at least a plurality of programming instructions stored in amemory and operating on a processor of a network-connected computingdevice and configured to maintain a schedule for each of a plurality ofcontact center agents, the schedule comprising at least a plurality ofwork items and a plurality of time-based scheduling information, andconfigured to receive a plurality of analysis information from ananalytics server, and configured to produce a plurality of schedulingevents based at least in part on at least a portion of the receivedanalysis information, and configured to operate on at least an agentschedule based at least in part on a portion of the plurality ofscheduling events, a plurality of scheduling events based at least inpart on at least a portion of the analysis results; receiving, at anagent queueing server comprising at least a plurality of programminginstructions stored in a memory and operating on a processor of anetwork-connected computing device and configured to receive at least aplurality of agent-specific information from a plurality of agentworkstations, the agent-specific information comprising at least anagent's current status, and configured to operate on at least a portionof a plurality of agent workstations to configure at least an agent'scurrent status, the configuration being based at least in part on anagent schedule, at least a portion of the plurality of schedulingevents; and modifying the current state of at least a portion of aplurality of agent workstations, the modification being based at leastin part on at least a portion of the plurality of scheduling events, isdisclosed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIGURES

The accompanying drawings illustrate several embodiments of theinvention and, together with the description, serve to explain theprinciples of the invention according to the embodiments. It will beappreciated by one skilled in the art that the particular embodimentsillustrated in the drawings are merely exemplary, and are not to beconsidered as limiting of the scope of the invention or the claimsherein in any way.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary hardwarearchitecture of a computing device used in an embodiment of theinvention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary logical architecturefor a client device, according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing an exemplary architectural arrangementof clients, servers, and external services, according to an embodimentof the invention.

FIG. 4 is another block diagram illustrating an exemplary hardwarearchitecture of a computing device used in various embodiments of theinvention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, according to a preferred embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, illustrating the use of distributed agents communicating viaa network.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, illustrating the use of off-site analytics via asoftware-as-a-service arrangement.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, according to a preferred embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method for usingreal-time analytics to identify immediate event triggers, according to apreferred embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The inventor has conceived, and reduced to practice, in a preferredembodiment of the invention, a system and method for automaticallyscheduling contact center agents using real-time analytics.

One or more different inventions may be described in the presentapplication. Further, for one or more of the inventions describedherein, numerous alternative embodiments may be described; it should beappreciated that these are presented for illustrative purposes only andare not limiting of the inventions contained herein or the claimspresented herein in any way. One or more of the inventions may be widelyapplicable to numerous embodiments, as may be readily apparent from thedisclosure. In general, embodiments are described in sufficient detailto enable those skilled in the art to practice one or more of theinventions, and it should be appreciated that other embodiments may beutilized and that structural, logical, software, electrical and otherchanges may be made without departing from the scope of the particularinventions. Accordingly, one skilled in the art will recognize that oneor more of the inventions may be practiced with various modificationsand alterations. Particular features of one or more of the inventionsdescribed herein may be described with reference to one or moreparticular embodiments or figures that form a part of the presentdisclosure, and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specificembodiments of one or more of the inventions. It should be appreciated,however, that such features are not limited to usage in the one or moreparticular embodiments or figures with reference to which they aredescribed. The present disclosure is neither a literal description ofall embodiments of one or more of the inventions nor a listing offeatures of one or more of the inventions that must be present in allembodiments.

Headings of sections provided in this patent application and the titleof this patent application are for convenience only, and are not to betaken as limiting the disclosure in any way.

Devices that are in communication with each other need not be incontinuous communication with each other, unless expressly specifiedotherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with eachother may communicate directly or indirectly through one or morecommunication means or intermediaries, logical or physical.

A description of an embodiment with several components in communicationwith each other does not imply that all such components are required. Tothe contrary, a variety of optional components may be described toillustrate a wide variety of possible embodiments of one or more of theinventions and in order to more fully illustrate one or more aspects ofthe inventions. Similarly, although process steps, method steps,algorithms or the like may be described in a sequential order, suchprocesses, methods and algorithms may generally be configured to work inalternate orders, unless specifically stated to the contrary. In otherwords, any sequence or order of steps that may be described in thispatent application does not, in and of itself, indicate a requirementthat the steps be performed in that order. The steps of describedprocesses may be performed in any order practical. Further, some stepsmay be performed simultaneously despite being described or implied asoccurring non-simultaneously (e.g., because one step is described afterthe other step). Moreover, the illustration of a process by itsdepiction in a drawing does not imply that the illustrated process isexclusive of other variations and modifications thereto, does not implythat the illustrated process or any of its steps are necessary to one ormore of the invention(s), and does not imply that the illustratedprocess is preferred. Also, steps are generally described once perembodiment, but this does not mean they must occur once, or that theymay only occur once each time a process, method, or algorithm is carriedout or executed. Some steps may be omitted in some embodiments or someoccurrences, or some steps may be executed more than once in a givenembodiment or occurrence.

When a single device or article is described herein, it will be readilyapparent that more than one device or article may be used in place of asingle device or article. Similarly, where more than one device orarticle is described herein, it will be readily apparent that a singledevice or article may be used in place of the more than one device orarticle.

The functionality or the features of a device may be alternativelyembodied by one or more other devices that are not explicitly describedas having such functionality or features. Thus, other embodiments of oneor more of the inventions need not include the device itself.

Techniques and mechanisms described or referenced herein will sometimesbe described in singular form for clarity. However, it should beappreciated that particular embodiments may include multiple iterationsof a technique or multiple instantiations of a mechanism unless notedotherwise. Process descriptions or blocks in figures should beunderstood as representing modules, segments, or portions of code whichinclude one or more executable instructions for implementing specificlogical functions or steps in the process. Alternate implementations areincluded within the scope of embodiments of the present invention inwhich, for example, functions may be executed out of order from thatshown or discussed, including substantially concurrently or in reverseorder, depending on the functionality involved, as would be understoodby those having ordinary skill in the art.

Hardware Architecture

Generally, the techniques disclosed herein may be implemented onhardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, theymay be implemented in an operating system kernel, in a separate userprocess, in a library package bound into network applications, on aspecially constructed machine, on an application-specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), or on a network interface card.

Software/hardware hybrid implementations of at least some of theembodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on a programmablenetwork-resident machine (which should be understood to includeintermittently connected network-aware machines) selectively activatedor reconfigured by a computer program stored in memory. Such networkdevices may have multiple network interfaces that may be configured ordesigned to utilize different types of network communication protocols.A general architecture for some of these machines may be describedherein in order to illustrate one or more exemplary means by which agiven unit of functionality may be implemented. According to specificembodiments, at least some of the features or functionalities of thevarious embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on one or moregeneral-purpose computers associated with one or more networks, such asfor example an end-user computer system, a client computer, a networkserver or other server system, a mobile computing device (e.g., tabletcomputing device, mobile phone, smartphone, laptop, or other appropriatecomputing device), a consumer electronic device, a music player, or anyother suitable electronic device, router, switch, or other suitabledevice, or any combination thereof. In at least some embodiments, atleast some of the features or functionalities of the various embodimentsdisclosed herein may be implemented in one or more virtualized computingenvironments (e.g., network computing clouds, virtual machines hosted onone or more physical computing machines, or other appropriate virtualenvironments).

Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a block diagram depicting anexemplary computing device 100 suitable for implementing at least aportion of the features or functionalities disclosed herein. Computingdevice 100 may be, for example, any one of the computing machines listedin the previous paragraph, or indeed any other electronic device capableof executing software- or hardware-based instructions according to oneor more programs stored in memory. Computing device 100 may beconfigured to communicate with a plurality of other computing devices,such as clients or servers, over communications networks such as a widearea network a metropolitan area network, a local area network, awireless network, the Internet, or any other network, using knownprotocols for such communication, whether wireless or wired.

In one embodiment, computing device 100 includes one or more centralprocessing units (CPU) 102, one or more interfaces 110, and one or morebusses 106 (such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus). Whenacting under the control of appropriate software or firmware, CPU 102may be responsible for implementing specific functions associated withthe functions of a specifically configured computing device or machine.For example, in at least one embodiment, a computing device 100 may beconfigured or designed to function as a server system utilizing CPU 102,local memory 101 and/or remote memory 120, and interface(s) 110. In atleast one embodiment, CPU 102 may be caused to perform one or more ofthe different types of functions and/or operations under the control ofsoftware modules or components, which for example, may include anoperating system and any appropriate applications software, drivers, andthe like.

CPU 102 may include one or more processors 103 such as, for example, aprocessor from one of the Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, and AMD families ofmicroprocessors. In some embodiments, processors 103 may includespecially designed hardware such as application-specific integratedcircuits (ASICs), electrically erasable programmable read-only memories(EEPROMs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and so forth, forcontrolling operations of computing device 100. In a specificembodiment, a local memory 101 (such as non-volatile random accessmemory (RAM) and/or read-only memory (ROM), including for example one ormore levels of cached memory) may also form part of CPU 102. However,there are many different ways in which memory may be coupled to system100. Memory 101 may be used for a variety of purposes such as, forexample, caching and/or storing data, programming instructions, and thelike. It should be further appreciated that CPU 102 may be one of avariety of system-on-a-chip (SOC) type hardware that may includeadditional hardware such as memory or graphics processing chips, such asa Qualcomm SNAPDRAGON™ or Samsung EXYNOS™ CPU as are becomingincreasingly common in the art, such as for use in mobile devices orintegrated devices.

As used herein, the term “processor” is not limited merely to thoseintegrated circuits referred to in the art as a processor, a mobileprocessor, or a microprocessor, but broadly refers to a microcontroller,a microcomputer, a programmable logic controller, anapplication-specific integrated circuit, and any other programmablecircuit.

In one embodiment, interfaces 110 are provided as network interfacecards (NICs). Generally, NICs control the sending and receiving of datapackets over a computer network; other types of interfaces 110 may forexample support other peripherals used with computing device 100. Amongthe interfaces that may be provided are Ethernet interfaces, frame relayinterfaces, cable interfaces, DSL interfaces, token ring interfaces,graphics interfaces, and the like. In addition, various types ofinterfaces may be provided such as, for example, universal serial bus(USB), Serial, Ethernet, FIREWIRE™, THUNDERBOLT™, PCI, parallel, radiofrequency (RF), BLUETOOTH™, near-field communications (e.g., usingnear-field magnetics), 802.11 (WiFi), frame relay, TCP/IP, ISDN, fastEthernet interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, Serial ATA (SATA) orexternal SATA (ESATA) interfaces, high-definition multimedia interface(HDMI), digital visual interface (DVI), analog or digital audiointerfaces, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) interfaces, high-speedserial interface (HSSI) interfaces, Point of Sale (POS) interfaces,fiber data distributed interfaces (FDDIs), and the like. Generally, suchinterfaces 110 may include physical ports appropriate for communicationwith appropriate media. In some cases, they may also include anindependent processor (such as a dedicated audio or video processor, asis common in the art for high-fidelity A/V hardware interfaces) and, insome instances, volatile and/or non-volatile memory (e.g., RAM).

Although the system shown in FIG. 1 illustrates one specificarchitecture for a computing device 100 for implementing one or more ofthe inventions described herein, it is by no means the only devicearchitecture on which at least a portion of the features and techniquesdescribed herein may be implemented. For example, architectures havingone or any number of processors 103 may be used, and such processors 103may be present in a single device or distributed among any number ofdevices. In one embodiment, a single processor 103 handlescommunications as well as routing computations, while in otherembodiments a separate dedicated communications processor may beprovided. In various embodiments, different types of features orfunctionalities may be implemented in a system according to theinvention that includes a client device (such as a tablet device orsmartphone running client software) and server systems (such as a serversystem described in more detail below).

Regardless of network device configuration, the system of the presentinvention may employ one or more memories or memory modules (such as,for example, remote memory block 120 and local memory 101) configured tostore data, program instructions for the general-purpose networkoperations, or other information relating to the functionality of theembodiments described herein (or any combinations of the above). Programinstructions may control execution of or comprise an operating systemand/or one or more applications, for example. Memory 120 or memories101, 120 may also be configured to store data structures, configurationdata, encryption data, historical system operations information, or anyother specific or generic non-program information described herein.

Because such information and program instructions may be employed toimplement one or more systems or methods described herein, at least somenetwork device embodiments may include nontransitory machine-readablestorage media, which, for example, may be configured or designed tostore program instructions, state information, and the like forperforming various operations described herein. Examples of suchnontransitory machine-readable storage media include, but are notlimited to, magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, andmagnetic tape; optical media such as CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical mediasuch as optical disks, and hardware devices that are speciallyconfigured to store and perform program instructions, such as read-onlymemory devices (ROM), flash memory (as is common in mobile devices andintegrated systems), solid state drives (SSD) and “hybrid SSD” storagedrives that may combine physical components of solid state and hard diskdrives in a single hardware device (as are becoming increasingly commonin the art with regard to personal computers), memristor memory, randomaccess memory (RAM), and the like. It should be appreciated that suchstorage means may be integral and non-removable (such as RAM hardwaremodules that may be soldered onto a motherboard or otherwise integratedinto an electronic device), or they may be removable such as swappableflash memory modules (such as “thumb drives” or other removable mediadesigned for rapidly exchanging physical storage devices),“hot-swappable” hard disk drives or solid state drives, removableoptical storage discs, or other such removable media, and that suchintegral and removable storage media may be utilized interchangeably.Examples of program instructions include both object code, such as maybe produced by a compiler, machine code, such as may be produced by anassembler or a linker, byte code, such as may be generated by forexample a Java™ compiler and may be executed using a Java virtualmachine or equivalent, or files containing higher level code that may beexecuted by the computer using an interpreter (for example, scriptswritten in Python, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, or any other scripting language).

In some embodiments, systems according to the present invention may beimplemented on a standalone computing system. Referring now to FIG. 2,there is shown a block diagram depicting a typical exemplaryarchitecture of one or more embodiments or components thereof on astandalone computing system. Computing device 200 includes processors210 that may run software that carry out one or more functions orapplications of embodiments of the invention, such as for example aclient application 230. Processors 210 may carry out computinginstructions under control of an operating system 220 such as, forexample, a version of Microsoft's WINDOWS™ operating system, Apple's MacOS/X or iOS operating systems, some variety of the Linux operatingsystem, Google's ANDROID™ operating system, or the like. In many cases,one or more shared services 225 may be operable in system 200, and maybe useful for providing common services to client applications 230.Services 225 may for example be WINDOWS™ services, user-space commonservices in a Linux environment, or any other type of common servicearchitecture used with operating system 210. Input devices 270 may be ofany type suitable for receiving user input, including for example akeyboard, touchscreen, microphone (for example, for voice input), mouse,touchpad, trackball, or any combination thereof. Output devices 260 maybe of any type suitable for providing output to one or more users,whether remote or local to system 200, and may include for example oneor more screens for visual output, speakers, printers, or anycombination thereof. Memory 240 may be random-access memory having anystructure and architecture known in the art, for use by processors 210,for example to run software. Storage devices 250 may be any magnetic,optical, mechanical, memristor, or electrical storage device for storageof data in digital form (such as those described above, referring toFIG. 1). Examples of storage devices 250 include flash memory, magnetichard drive, CD-ROM, and/or the like.

In some embodiments, systems of the present invention may be implementedon a distributed computing network, such as one having any number ofclients and/or servers. Referring now to FIG. 3, there is shown a blockdiagram depicting an exemplary architecture 300 for implementing atleast a portion of a system according to an embodiment of the inventionon a distributed computing network. According to the embodiment, anynumber of clients 330 may be provided. Each client 330 may run softwarefor implementing client-side portions of the present invention; clientsmay comprise a system 200 such as that illustrated in FIG. 2. Inaddition, any number of servers 320 may be provided for handlingrequests received from one or more clients 330. Clients 330 and servers320 may communicate with one another via one or more electronic networks310, which may be in various embodiments any of the Internet, a widearea network, a mobile telephony network (such as CDMA or GSM cellularnetworks), a wireless network (such as WiFi, Wimax, LTE, and so forth),or a local area network (or indeed any network topology known in theart; the invention does not prefer any one network topology over anyother). Networks 310 may be implemented using any known networkprotocols, including for example wired and/or wireless protocols.

In addition, in some embodiments, servers 320 may call external services370 when needed to obtain additional information, or to refer toadditional data concerning a particular call. Communications withexternal services 370 may take place, for example, via one or morenetworks 310. In various embodiments, external services 370 may compriseweb-enabled services or functionality related to or installed on thehardware device itself. For example, in an embodiment where clientapplications 230 are implemented on a smartphone or other electronicdevice, client applications 230 may obtain information stored in aserver system 320 in the cloud or on an external service 370 deployed onone or more of a particular enterprise's or user's premises.

In some embodiments of the invention, clients 330 or servers 320 (orboth) may make use of one or more specialized services or appliancesthat may be deployed locally or remotely across one or more networks310. For example, one or more databases 340 may be used or referred toby one or more embodiments of the invention. It should be understood byone having ordinary skill in the art that databases 340 may be arrangedin a wide variety of architectures and using a wide variety of dataaccess and manipulation means. For example, in various embodiments oneor more databases 340 may comprise a relational database system using astructured query language (SQL), while others may comprise analternative data storage technology such as those referred to in the artas “NoSQL” (for example, Hadoop Cassandra, Google BigTable, and soforth). In some embodiments, variant database architectures such ascolumn-oriented databases, in-memory databases, clustered databases,distributed databases, or even flat file data repositories may be usedaccording to the invention. It will be appreciated by one havingordinary skill in the art that any combination of known or futuredatabase technologies may be used as appropriate, unless a specificdatabase technology or a specific arrangement of components is specifiedfor a particular embodiment herein. Moreover, it should be appreciatedthat the term “database” as used herein may refer to a physical databasemachine, a cluster of machines acting as a single database system, or alogical database within an overall database management system. Unless aspecific meaning is specified for a given use of the term “database”, itshould be construed to mean any of these senses of the word, all ofwhich are understood as a plain meaning of the term “database” by thosehaving ordinary skill in the art.

Similarly, most embodiments of the invention may make use of one or moresecurity systems 360 and configuration systems 350. Security andconfiguration management are common information technology (IT) and webfunctions, and some amount of each are generally associated with any ITor web systems. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill inthe art that any configuration or security subsystems known in the artnow or in the future may be used in conjunction with embodiments of theinvention without limitation, unless a specific security 360 orconfiguration system 350 or approach is specifically required by thedescription of any specific embodiment.

FIG. 4 shows an exemplary overview of a computer system 400 as may beused in any of the various locations throughout the system. It isexemplary of any computer that may execute code to process data. Variousmodifications and changes may be made to computer system 400 withoutdeparting from the broader scope of the system and method disclosedherein. CPU 401 is connected to bus 402, to which bus is also connectedmemory 403, nonvolatile memory 404, display 407, I/O unit 408, andnetwork interface card (NIC) 413. I/O unit 408 may, typically, beconnected to keyboard 409, pointing device 410, hard disk 412, andreal-time clock 411. NIC 413 connects to network 414, which may be theInternet or a local network, which local network may or may not haveconnections to the Internet. Also shown as part of system 400 is powersupply unit 405 connected, in this example, to ac supply 406. Not shownare batteries that could be present, and many other devices andmodifications that are well known but are not applicable to the specificnovel functions of the current system and method disclosed herein. Itshould be appreciated that some or all components illustrated may becombined, such as in various integrated applications (for example,Qualcomm or Samsung SOC-based devices), or whenever it may beappropriate to combine multiple capabilities or functions into a singlehardware device (for instance, in mobile devices such as smartphones,video game consoles, in-vehicle computer systems such as navigation ormultimedia systems in automobiles, or other integrated hardwaredevices).

In various embodiments, functionality for implementing systems ormethods of the present invention may be distributed among any number ofclient and/or server components. For example, various software modulesmay be implemented for performing various functions in connection withthe present invention, and such modules may be variously implemented torun on server and/or client components.

Conceptual Architecture

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture 500 forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, according to a preferred embodiment of the invention.According to the embodiment, a variety of client devices 510 such as atelephone 511, email 512, or personal computer 513 may communicate witha contact center 520 via a network 501 such as the Internet or othersuitable communication network. According to the nature of a particularclient device or interaction, various contact center system componentsmay be utilized to handle the interaction, for example a telephone callmay be received and processed by a computer telephony integration (CTI)server 527 that may provide the interaction to one or more of aplurality of contact center agent workstations 525 a-n for handling,email interaction may be received and routed by an email server 524 toan email client or other software operating on an agent workstation 525a-n, web-based interaction such as instant messages or other chatinteraction may be received and routed by a web server 523 to chatsoftware operating on an agent workstation 525 a-n, or a telephonecaller may interact with an interactive voice response (IVR) system 521and interact with various prompts as is a common practice in the art,and the call interaction may then be processed by an automated calldistributor (ACD) 522 and provided to an agent 525 a-n for handling. Forexample, a telephone interaction may be provided to a single agent fordirect interaction with a customer, or an email interaction may beprovided to a group of agents for resolution, such as when multipletasks need to be performed in parallel or when a collaborative effortmay be required.

According to the embodiment, a scheduling server 531 may be utilized,comprising at least a plurality of programming instructions stored in amemory 403 and operating on a processor 401 of a network-connectedcomputing device 400 (as described above, referring to FIG. 4) andconfigured to maintain and operate on a plurality of agent schedules,for example comprising agent availability times when an agent isscheduled to work and be available to receive interactions, meetings,training sessions, or other such events. A queueing server 532 may beused, comprising at least a plurality of programming instructions storedin a memory 403 and operating on a processor 401 of a network-connectedcomputing device 400 (as described above, referring to FIG. 4) andconfigured to monitor the current state of agents, and to operate onagent states, for example to update agent availability, skills,training, language capabilities, or any other agent-specific stateinformation that may be relevant within a contact center environmentsuch as for making routing determinations for inbound interactions.Scheduling server 531 may operate on a schedule through the use ofscheduling events, wherein a scheduling event comprises a particularchange to be made to a schedule for a particular agent (that is, eachscheduling event corresponds to a single discrete scheduling change tobe performed). These scheduling events may also be provided to aqueueing server 532 that may then directly alter an agent's currentstate based on a received scheduling event, for example to automaticallyplace an agent in an unavailable state (so they no longer receiveinteractions) so they may receive “on the fly” training, or toautomatically update an agent's associated skill sets to reflect recenttraining received or a reorganization of skill descriptions (or anyother such skills-related change that may necessitate altering anagent's state), so that they may immediately begin participating ininteractions associated with the new skills.

According to the embodiment, an analytics server 530 may be utilized,comprising at least a plurality of programming instructions stored in amemory 403 and operating on a processor 401 of a network-connectedcomputing device 400 (as described above, referring to FIG. 4) andconfigured to receive and analyze interaction information from variouscontact center systems as described above, and to provide the results ofanalysis to a scheduling server 531 for use in producing schedule events(such as to update an agent schedule based on the details of aparticular interaction, as described below). For example, analyticsserver 530 may receive email-based interaction information pertaining toa particular interaction being handled by an agent, and may identifycertain key words or phrases within the interaction such as date or timeinformation (for example, if a customer sends an email message as partof an interaction, requesting contact within a specific time window), orthat may have been configured as indicators of agent-specific schedulingevents such as training or collaboration. For example, if a customer'smessages indicate they are dissatisfied with an agent's assistance withan issue concerning a particular product, a scheduling event foradditional training regarding that product may be produced by schedulingserver 531 based on these analysis results.

In this manner, analysis may be performed on historical or storedinteraction information as well as “live” or real-time interactioninformation for interactions that may be currently in progress orimmediately after their completion. Scheduling changes may beautomatically implemented based on analysis, for example toautomatically schedule agents for new training, meetings or othercollaboration, outbound interactions or follow-ups, or other suchevents. In addition, real-time scheduling changes may be made as neededand agent states directly updated to enable immediate schedulingchanges, for example enabling automated immediate-action training. Forexample, if an agent becomes strident with a customer or triggersspecific key words or phrases (for example, as identified via speechanalysis), they may be immediately placed in an unavailable state andscheduled for immediate training to correct any performance issuesbefore they participate in any further interactions. Additionally,analysis may optionally produce scheduling events based on predictiondata, for example analyzing a body of existing data to identifyscheduling changes that may improve operation or agent performance, andthen proactively modifying agent schedules and current states toimplement the changes rather than waiting and reactively apply them at alater time (potentially after interactions have been negatively impactedby the delay).

Detailed Description of Exemplary Embodiments

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture 600 forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, illustrating the use of distributed system agentscommunicating via a network. According to the embodiment, a variety ofclient devices 510 such as a telephone 511, email software application512, or personal computer 513 may communicate with a contact center 520via a network 601 such as the Internet or other suitable communicationnetwork. According to the nature of a particular client device orinteraction, various contact center system components may be utilized tohandle the interaction, for example a telephone call may be received andprocessed by a computer telephony integration (CTI) server 527 that mayprovide the interaction to one or more of a plurality of contact centeragent workstations 620 a-n for handling, email interaction may bereceived and routed by an email server 524 to an email client or othersoftware operating on an agent workstation 620 a-n, web-basedinteraction such as instant messages or other chat interaction may bereceived and routed by a web server 523 to chat software operating on anagent workstation 620 a-n, or a telephone caller may interact with aninteractive voice response (IVR) system 521 and interact with variousprompts as is a common practice in the art, and the call interaction maythen be processed by an automated call distributor (ACD) 522 andprovided to an agent 620 a-n for handling. For example, a telephoneinteraction may be provided to a single agent for direct interactionwith a customer, or an email interaction may be provided to a group ofagents for resolution, such as when multiple tasks need to be performedin parallel or when a collaborative effort may be required. A schedulingserver 531 may be utilized to maintain and operate on a plurality ofagent schedules, for example comprising agent availability times when anagent is scheduled to work and be available to receive interactions,meetings, training sessions, or other such events. A queueing server 532may be used to monitor the current state of agents, and to operate onagent states, for example to update agent availability, skills,training, language capabilities, or any other agent-specific stateinformation that may be relevant within a contact center environmentsuch as for making routing determinations for inbound interactions.Scheduling server 531 may operate on a schedule through the use ofscheduling events, wherein a scheduling event comprises a particularchange to be made to a schedule for a particular agent (that is, eachscheduling event corresponds to a single discrete scheduling change tobe performed). These scheduling events may also be provided to aqueueing server 532 that may then directly alter an agent's currentstate based on a received scheduling event, for example to automaticallyplace an agent in an unavailable state (so they no longer receiveinteractions) so they may receive “on the fly” training, or toautomatically update an agent's associated skill sets to reflect recenttraining received or a reorganization of skill descriptions (or anyother such skills-related change that may necessitate altering anagent's state), so that they may immediately begin participating ininteractions associated with the new skills.

According to the embodiment, a plurality of distributed agentworkstations 620 a-n may communicate via network 501 to interact withsystems operated by contact center 520, for example, to receive customeraccount information from CRM server 526 or to participate in a customerinteraction received by contact center 520 such as a phone call via anIVR 521. In such an arrangement, agent workstations 620 a-n may provideinteraction information via network 501, such as periodically sendingstatus updates or events that may contain details of an ongoinginteraction, or they may optionally be monitored in real-time such asthrough the use of screen-sharing or audio listening. Agent workstations620 a-n may also receive scheduling and status updates via network 601to facilitate automated scheduling and queueing as described previously,referring to FIG. 5. In this manner it may be appreciated that automatedanalysis and scheduling may be utilized both in traditional contactcenter environments (that is, where agents are located within a physicalcontact center and may generally communicate via a shared internalnetwork) or in distributed or cloud-based contact center arrangementswhere agents may operate form any geographic location via networkcommunication.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an exemplary system architecture 700 forautomatically scheduling contact center agents using real-timeanalytics, illustrating the use of off-site analytics via asoftware-as-a-service arrangement. According to the embodiment, avariety of client devices 510 such as a telephone 511, email softwareapplication 512, or personal computer 513 may communicate with a contactcenter 520 via a network 701 such as the Internet or other suitablecommunication network. According to the nature of a particular clientdevice or interaction, various contact center system components may beutilized to handle the interaction, for example a telephone call may bereceived and processed by a computer telephony integration (CTI) server527 that may provide the interaction to one or more of a plurality ofcontact center agent workstations 525 a-n for handling, emailinteraction may be received and routed by an email server 524 to anemail client or other software operating on an agent workstation 525a-n, web-based interaction such as instant messages or other chatinteraction may be received and routed by a web server 523 to chatsoftware operating on an agent workstation 525 a-n, or a telephonecaller may interact with an interactive voice response (IVR) system 521and interact with various prompts as is a common practice in the art,and the call interaction may then be processed by an automated calldistributor (ACD) 522 and provided to an agent 525 a-n for handling. Forexample, a telephone interaction may be provided to a single agent fordirect interaction with a customer, or an email interaction may beprovided to a group of agents for resolution, such as when multipletasks need to be performed in parallel or when a collaborative effortmay be required. A scheduling server 531 may be utilized to maintain andoperate on a plurality of agent schedules, for example comprising agentavailability times when an agent is scheduled to work and be availableto receive interactions, meetings, training sessions, or other suchevents. A queueing server 532 may be used to monitor the current stateof agents, and to operate on agent states, for example to update agentavailability, skills, training, language capabilities, or any otheragent-specific state information that may be relevant within a contactcenter environment such as for making routing determinations for inboundinteractions. Scheduling server 531 may operate on a schedule throughthe use of scheduling events, wherein a scheduling event comprises aparticular change to be made to a schedule for a particular agent (thatis, each scheduling event corresponds to a single discrete schedulingchange to be performed). These scheduling events may also be provided toa queueing server 532 that may then directly alter an agent's currentstate based on a received scheduling event, for example to automaticallyplace an agent in an unavailable state (so they no longer receiveinteractions) so they may receive “on the fly” training, or toautomatically update an agent's associated skill sets to reflect recenttraining received or a reorganization of skill descriptions (or anyother such skills-related change that may necessitate altering anagent's state), so that they may immediately begin participating ininteractions associated with the new skills.

According to the embodiment, a cloud-based analytics server 710 may beutilized in addition to or in place of an analytics server operated by acontact center (as described previously, referring to FIG. 5) bycommunicating with systems operated by a contact center (as describedabove) via a network. For example, a cloud-based analytics server 710may be operated by a third-party vendor providing interaction analysisvia a network in a “software-as-a-service” (SaaS) business model, or maybe operated by a business in an offsite location physical separate froma contact center operated by the same business, for example to servicemultiple contact centers using a single analytics server 710. Analyticsserver 710 may receive communication from components, for examplecustomer interaction information from an IVR 521, telephony informationfrom a CTI server 527 or ACD 522, customer account information from acustomer relations management (CRM) server 526, or agent or interactioninformation from an agent workstation 525 a-n. According to a particulararrangement, a variety of contact center systems (such as, for example,CRM server 526) may communicate via a network 701 using a variety ofcommunication adapters suited to their particular use, such as using asoftware application programming interface (API) to facilitatecommunication between CRM server 526 and analytics server 710 vianetwork 501. In this manner, it may be appreciated that analytics may beperformed via a network 701, and may optionally be provided by a thirdparty to a plurality of contact centers as clients.

Such an arrangement may optionally be utilized in addition to adistributed contact center arrangement described above (referring toFIG. 6), facilitating a distributed contact center environment whereagents may operate over a network and analysis may also be performed viaa network. Such distributed and cloud-based arrangements may bedesirable, for example, to accommodate analysis and real-time schedulingoperation in an existing contact center without the need for expensiveor time-consuming architecture changes, and in this manner it can beappreciated that the analysis and scheduling features described mayeasily be added to any contact center regardless of physical,geographic, or network arrangement or system components or agents.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method 800 forscheduling contact center agents using automated analytics, according toa preferred embodiment of the invention. In an initial step 801, ananalytics server may receive a plurality of interaction-specificinformation, for example stored email messages from an email-basedinteraction, or speech-based audio information being monitored from atelephone interaction currently in progress. In a next step 802, theanalytics server may analyze at least a portion of theinteraction-specific information, for example by performing text-basedanalysis of email messages or speech analysis of audio data. The resultsof analysis, for example including key words or phrases identified,interaction-specific details such as customer information or interactiontopic, or technical details such as agent software utilization, may beprovided to a scheduling server for use in producing scheduling events.In a next step 803 the scheduling server may produce a plurality ofscheduling events based at least in part on at least a portion of theanalysis results, for example a scheduling event comprising instructionsto modify a particular agent's schedule to email a customer back tocontinue an interaction at a requested time, or to modify a particularagent's current status to make them unavailable for receivinginteractions (for example so that they may receive immediate training orattend an urgent meeting). In a next step 804 a queueing server mayreceive at least a portion of the plurality of scheduling events, and ina final step 805 may modify the current state of at least a portion of aplurality of agent workstations based at least in part on at least aportion of the plurality of scheduling events. In this manner, it may beappreciated that agent performance and interaction details may becontinually analyzed both in real-time and at a later time (for example,to analyze a body of existing data periodically or upon implementationor configuration of a new system component), and analysis may be used toautomatically modify agent schedules as well as current agent states,providing automated scheduling as well as immediate-action status andscheduling changes.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method 900 for usingreal-time analytics to identify immediate event triggers, according to apreferred embodiment of the invention. In an initial step 901, ananalytics server 530 (as described above, referring to FIG. 5) maymonitor an interaction as it occurs in real-time. In a next step 902, apattern match may be recognized, such as a section of text or speech, ora particular trait or set of traits such as speech cadence or tone. Arecognized pattern match may then be compared to known configurationparameters to determine whether immediate action is required 903, and ifso a scheduling server may be directed 904 accordingly and theappropriate parties (such as a supervisor) notified 905. For example, ifan agent uses restricted vocabulary during a customer interaction (suchas recommending a competitor's product or swearing at a customer), ascheduling server may be directed to schedule the agent for immediatecoaching and remove them from a call queue, and their supervisor ortraining staff (or both) may be notified.

If a pattern match is not immediately actionable, configuration may bechecked to determine whether action is still required 906. For example,if a customer expresses an interest in cancelling their account,immediate action may not be warranted but a follow-up call may bescheduled to try and remedy the situation or to verify that the agentwas able to resolve their concerns to their satisfaction. If no action(immediate or delayed) is required, or after performing any requiredactions, analytics server may then resume normal monitoring 907 andoperation continues.

The skilled person will be aware of a range of possible modifications ofthe various embodiments described above. Accordingly, the presentinvention is defined by the claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for automatically scheduling contactcenter agents for immediate training using real-time analytics,comprising: an analytics server comprising at least a plurality ofprogramming instructions stored in a memory and operating on a processorof a network-connected computing device and configured to: receiveinteraction-specific information from a contact center system for anagent; analyze the interaction-specific information to determine theagent's performance based on recognized patterns of interaction; producea performance result; and provide said performance result to ascheduling server; and a scheduling server comprising at least aplurality of programming instructions stored in a memory and operatingon a processor of a network-connected computing device and configuredto: maintain a schedule for the agent, the schedule comprising aplurality of work items and a plurality of time-based schedulinginformation; receive the performance result from the analytics server;where the performance result indicates a need for training, schedule atraining event for the agent; notify an agent queueing server about thetraining event; and an agent queueing server comprising at least aplurality of programming instructions stored in a memory and operatingon a processor of a network-connected computing device and configuredto: receive the notification about the training event from thescheduling server; receive current state information for the agent froman agent workstation; place the agent's current state to an unavailablestate within a call queue until the training is complete.
 2. The systemof claim 1, wherein the interaction-specific information system for anagent is received from a plurality of contact center systems.
 3. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein the interaction-specific informationcomprises speech-based audio data.
 4. The system of claim 3, wherein theanalytics server is configured to perform speech analysis on thespeech-based audio data.
 5. A method for automatically schedulingcontact center agents for immediate training using real-time analytics,comprising the steps of: receiving interaction-specific information froma contact center system for an agent; analyzing the interaction-specificinformation to determine the agent's performance based on recognizedpatterns of interaction; producing a performance result; providing saidperformance result to a scheduling server; maintaining a schedule forthe agent, the schedule comprising a plurality of work items and aplurality of time-based scheduling information; receiving theperformance result from the analytics server; where the performanceresult indicates a need for training, scheduling a training event forthe agent; notifying an agent queueing server about the training event;receiving the notification about the training event from the schedulingserver; receiving current state information for the agent from an agentworkstation; and placing the agent's current state to an unavailablestate within a call queue until the training is complete.
 6. The methodof claim 6, further comprising the step of receiving theinteraction-specific information system for an agent from a plurality ofcontact center systems.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein theinteraction-specific information comprises speech-based audio data. 8.The method of claim 7, further comprising the step of performing speechanalysis on the speech-based audio data.